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Saturday, August 16, 2014

Extra! Extra! America’s Next Great Author Volume 3! (Week 7)

I ended up having a lot of fun
with this week’s prompt, although it took me quite a while to settle on what I
wanted to write about. The challenged was titled “Sick, Sad, World” and the
prompt was to write about something about we thought was wrong with our
society. It could’ve been anything from lying to murder and everything in between.

My
first reaction to the prompt for was to write about abortion. It’s something
I feel very strongly against and I was originally going to write an essay about
the moral implications of it. I got halfway though the essay when I decided
I wanted to change my topic. The essay didn’t really have the impact I wanted
it to have, so I decided to write a short story on the same subject. It was
going to be titled “What It?” and it was going to show two different mothers,
one who got an abortion and one who didn’t. After a while of working in this
one, I had a really hard time getting started and had a bit of an inspiration
block, and I shifted gears entirely.

My
second idea was to write about the meat processing industry. I had recently
watched a video from PETA about the horrors that occur within the industry.
Although I am not against eating meat itself, the meat processing industry is
something that I find very disturbing and morally wrong. I was going to write a
sci-fi story taking place on a different plant with pig like creatures as the
main characters. A young boy who’s father runs a “human meat” factory meets a
girl in an activist group and is exposed to the horrors that occur in the
factory. However I ran into an inspiration block for this story was well and
scrapped the idea.

I
then turned to the dystopian genre, because it’s very easy to criticize society
when writing a dystopian theme. I then ended up writing my piece about judging
people based on their physical appearance. The story features a society with
something called “The Judgment Board” who place people in jobs based on their
first impression and physical appearance alone. I ended up really liking the
idea and I am considering slightly expanding it into maybe a novella one day.

Lori
won the week once again and myself, Victoria, and Avahline all ended up tying
for second place. Adam went home because he didn’t submit a piece.

My entry titled “First
Impression” is below:

The Judgment Board knew everything. They knew how you eat,
how you think, how long you spent getting ready in the morning, and how your
mind worked. They could do that by just a quick glance at a person. They were
the best at the job, and that’s why our government put so much of their trust
into them. I trusted their decisions, and so did the rest of society.

I have only
heard stories about how they made their decisions. They looked at the smallest
details; ones that you didn’t even notice about yourself. How often you
blinked, if you tapped the table while you were taking a test, the color of the
shirt you were wearing, they would all give away something about yourself. They
took almost every physical detail into account. Eye color, hair color, height,
weight, freckles, they all meant something different.

At birth
they determined what type of school you could go to, how long you had to study,
what you had to study in higher education, and what things you could do for fun
in your free time. They had placed me in sixteen years of schooling studying
chemistry and I could play soccer and volleyball in my free time. They had read
me perfectly and I couldn’t have been happier doing anything else.

I was scheduled for my first ever occupational
screening today. I didn’t know what to expect, but I knew I would get placed in
a lab doing some sort of research, taking my past studies into account. Occupational
screenings were a big deal for most people, but I wasn’t nervous, I was rather
excited. I trusted their judgment and I knew they would place me in the right
spot. It was unfortunate for me that this was the one day my alarm decided not
to go off in time.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I
yelled at my roommate as I stumbled into the kitchen, my clothes looking a bit
disheveled and my hair only half brushed.

“It’s not my responsibility to know
your personal schedule.” She responded while not even glancing up from her
newspaper. She’s not the roommate I would’ve picked, but the Judgment Board
assigned us together, so we must have compatible living conditions on some
level. I impatiently tapped my foot against the tile floor as I waited for my
coffee to brew.

“You know,” I heard my roommate say
while still not moving from her position. “Taking coffee into a screening can
affect how they judge you.”

“I thought it wasn’t your job to
know my schedule.” I snapped back at her.

“Well that doesn’t mean I don’t
like to be nosey.” She put down her newspaper and crumpling it up into a ball
and throwing it into the trashcan. “Those things are just a bunch of bullshit
if you ask me.”

“Why would you say that when they
just assigned you to three more years of law school? You’re almost guaranteed
to be a top notch lawyer by this point.” She was luckier than most people who
got placed working retail or flipping burgers for five years at a time.

I heard her sigh before she
responded. “It’s just a bunch of obnoxious people staring at you and thinking
of ways to tear you apart. Besides, this is the third time I’ve been placed
back in law school. I’m twenty-seven now believe it or not and I have a feeling
I’m never going to get out of school.”

“Well maybe they just know that you
need more education than the average person.” I knew better than most people
that she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. I picked up the coffee pot and
quickly poured it into my mug, spilling a bit and burning myself in the
process. I began to sugar and cream as I listened to my roommate ramble on.

“I think it’s because those people
don’t give a shit about anyone. They don’t know anyone’s background history and
they judge a person based on what they see at a given moment. You can’t know a
person just by a first impression.”

“Maybe they don’t need to take
background information into account. They can figure all that stuff out just by
first glance. They are professionals after all.”

She laughed at me as she walked out
of the kitchen, taking a seat on the couch in front of the TV. “Tell me if
that’s what you think when you get back.”

I rolled my eyes at her as I
grabbed my coffee and headed out the door. I practically sprinted down five
flights of stairs and down two blocks before I caught the bus to the Department
of Occupational Services. While I had the chance to catch my breath I took a
sip of my coffee and immediately recoiled at the taste. I had put way too much
sugar in it. I must’ve let myself get distracted by my roommate as she was
rambling on. I didn’t think much about what she had to say. She probably got
sent back to law school because she never showed up to her lectures. I knew
from firsthand experience that she skipped out on her classes more than a few
times.

Minutes later the bus came to a
stop in front of the gleaming white doors of the Department of Occupational
Services. As I got off the bus I didn’t have time to sit and admire the
building like I would if I were passing by on a normal day. By now, I was already
five minutes late for my screening. I didn’t feel like waiting for the elevator
and opted to run up three flights of stairs to the screening room.

“You must me Hannah Anderson,” The
woman sitting behind a desk asked me as I ran into the office.

I nodded my head while still
catching my breath. She only smiled to me as she motioned to a black door off
to the right of the reception area.

“Go right on in. The Board is
waiting for you.” I took a deep breath as I walked over to the door and reached
for the door handle. As I twisted it and pushed the door forward I was greeted
by a hundred pairs of eyes, all staring directly at me.

The room was gigantic and I could
barely see the top of the ceiling. Rows of seats were stacked up ward in rings
almost like a coliseum. Every single seat was taken by either a man or woman
wearing a black suits and glasses. The room was dead silent and I could almost
feel their glares as they looked down on me, ready to choose my future. Their
eyes were all trained on me as I walked into the middle of the room, surrounded
on all sides by their knowing glares.

“State you’re name.” A man shouted
out from somewhere in the room I turned around trying pick out the person the
voice came from, but the voice had echoed throughout the room, making it hard
to tell the direction it had come from.

In an instant, the room erupted in
shouts and yells from every direction.

“She’s a girl.”

“Eliminate all jobs in professional
sports leagues.”

“As well as construction,”

“She has a boring name.”

“That eliminates all jobs in film,
writing, and singing.”

“She doesn’t strike me as
professional either.”

“Look at her hair! She doesn’t even
care enough to dress nicely for us.”

“Eliminate beauty school as an
option.”

“She was out of breath when she
arrived.”

“She needs more physical exercise.”

“She was late as well.”

“So eliminate all jobs in business
and customer service. She obviously can’t keep up with simple deadlines.”

“She seems very stressed. I don’t
think she could handle a high stress job.”

“Eliminate law enforcement,
security, and emergency response jobs!”

My head swiveled in all directions
as I tried to keep up with the comments being made about me, but it was nearly impossible.
I just started up at them blankly as they decided my future right before my
eyes.

“She relies on daily caffeine
boosts.”

“Someone test the contents of that
mug she has!”Before I had the chance to
respond, a man in the front row grabbed my mug right out of my hand and took a
sip out of it, recoiling the same way I did when I drank it for the first time.

“Excessive amount of sugar,
signifying immaturity.”

I guess my roommate was right when
she said brining coffee effects your placement.

“That was a mistake,” I tried to
explain to the man who still had my mug clasped in his hands. “My hand must’ve
slipped when I was putting in the sugar this…”

“She is also careless and inexact.”
The man holding my coffee mug stated as he gave the mug back to me with a
condescending stare.

“Elimination all jobs the culinary
field.”

“She doesn’t wear glasses.”

“Then her intellectual mental
ability is substantially lower than most. Eliminated jobs in the scientific and
medical fields!”

“But I’ve been in school studying
chemistry for the past sixteen years! I’ve been trained for a medical research
job!” I tried pleading with the ones in the front row, but my plea seemed to
land on deaf ears.

“Assessment complete!” A man yelled from
somewhere in the room and everyone went silent.

“Hannah Anderson, you are assigned
to work in the mail delivery service. Please schedule a screening in ten years
for reassessment.”

I looked up at the room of people
in shock. Surely they couldn’t assign me to ten years delivering mail because I
didn’t wear glasses and put too much sugar in my coffee this morning.”

“Can I request a reassessment?” I
yelled up at the group of people.

“You may file for a reassessment,
but it may take up to twenty years to confirm. Please leave now, or you will be
removed by force.” I looked over to the door where I had entered and saw two
large men standing on either side. I slowly back out of the room, not wanting
to look anyone in the eye. At the front desk, the smiling woman handed me a
brown cardboard box.

“Inside are your job instructions
along with your new uniform! You will excel in whatever career path the
Judgment Board has picked for you.”

I took the box from her and carried
it down three flights of stairs and out the front doors of the building. On the
bus ride home the cardboard box sat on my lap. I felt like it was weighing me
down from what I could’ve accomplished. I couldn’t help but think about how a
group of people who had never met me before decided my future in less than five
minutes. All based on what? What they could interpret about my personality just
from physical traits. How was that even fair?

As I pushed open the door to my
apartment, I could hear my roommate laughing before I could even shut the door
behind me.

“What did I tell you?” She shouted
in a rather mocking tone. “It’s just a bunch of bullshit.”

This morning I would’ve never
agreed with that statement, but we were in the same boat now.